Friday, July 13, 2012

Tibia (PC)

Rating: 2 out of 5

Pros: No level cap, huge world map, constant updates

Cons: No sense of community, lots of botters, no sound, dated graphics

When I say Tibia is an oldschool MMORPG, I'm not exaggerating.
Developed by CipSoft GmbH, Tibia has been online since very early in
1997. No, that's not a typo. It's undergone numerous revisions and
updates since then, and received a lot of cosmetic overhauls and content
updates -- but the core gameplay is still the same as it was all those
years ago.

Tibia is actually free to play, and uses a
subscription model where players can purchase a "premium account" to
give them additional in-game benefits. This includes faster health
and/or mana regeneration, character outfits, mounts, an astounding
number of new areas to play, new cities, new spells, etc. The amount of
regular content vs premium content is really lopsided, and while you can
enjoy the game as a free account it does not compare to the game if you
pay for the premium account instead. They recently introduced a way to
buy premium "scrolls" for money and transfer them into the game, so you
can at least get a premium account for in-game currency rather than cash
if you really want -- though it's kind of expensive.

The
first thing worth mentioning is that Tibia is a 2D RPG, and the graphics
are similar to the old Ultima games (Ultima VI or Ultima VII). This
means square tiles for everything, but the tops of them can stick up
further to show perspective. There are multiple levels of depth and
height, but the map clips the levels above and below you so that you can
see whatever floor you happen to be on. If you go upstairs you can see
the floor and walls where you're at but you can't see the floors above
or below you (though you can see the area below you if it extends
further than floor you're on).

These days there are some small
animations, like twinkling orange specs at the tops of torches or tiled
animations for different spells, but they aren't very complex nor are
they very smooth. Characters and enemies still have what appear to be
two-frame animations that just animate faster if you move faster. You
can only walk in four directions with the arrow keys, though you can
"push" yourself diagonally by dragging yourself with the mouse or using
the number pad (this is much slower than walking in one of the cardinal
directions). I really wish the game had WASD movement, though it would
break the chat interface.

The actual game window takes up the
top-left corner of the screen. The bottom of the screen is filled with a
scrollable chat frame, and you can type whatever you want and hit enter
to send it. You can scroll through the previous things and open up
multiple tabs for different chat windows like public chat, NPCs, guild
chat, private messages, etc. The right side of the screen has a user
interface that consists of different blocks that can be minimized and
maximized depending on what you want to be visible. This can include
your health and mana, skills, inventory, equipment, VIP list (friend's
list), containers on the ground next to you that you have open, corpses
you're searching for loot, etc. It's nice that you can collapse some of
these (like the skill pane) so that you don't have them eating up your
screen real estate all the time, but you can look at them any time you
want.

As for sound... Tibia has none. No ominous background
music, no swords clanging or fireballs roaring, no monsters taunting
you, no clicks or beeps for interface interaction. No sound
what-so-ever. This is one of the few areas that I'm amazed they haven't
expanded to in all the years the game has been around. Personally I
would love at least some basic roars and clangs, but for whatever reason
they have decided to pass on the option.

Tibia is a pretty
open-ended game, but it's also a huge grind-fest. You start out on an
island, which is a sort of training area called Rookgaard. There you
learn how to play the game and hone your skills before setting off for
the mainland. You fight some of the weaker enemies in the game, interact
with some NPCs, do some quests and get a general feel for the game. The
map itself is decent sized, and when I originally reached the mainland
in the game I got lost a number of times trying to find my way around.

There are some varied tilesets for different landscapes, with lots of
oceans and rivers around, deserts, jungles, snow and ice, caves and
mountains. There are also over a dozen different sprawling towns in the
game spread around the map, and each of them has a different theme. The
town of Ankrahmun for example lies in the desert, and the whole town
looks like it is made of sandstone and the buildings are in the shape of
pyramids. The town of Port Hope is in the jungle, and most of the town
is built up on stilts with wooden rope bridges connecting buildings that
are made of wooden planks. I really appreciate the amount of variety in
the looks of the game, and it really helps to relieve the sting of
having no sound at all.

Leveling up in Tibia takes a long
time, and the higher you get the longer it takes. There is no level cap;
you can level up as high as you want. Every level gives you additional
health, mana and walking speed. Different classes gain different amounts
of health and mana, but the speed is constant. At level 1 you
practically crawl around the map, but wait until a level 300+ runs by
you; he pretty much just glitches across the screen in big spurts
because he's so fast.

As for your other skills, Tibia doesn't
have the traditional strength, dexterity, intelligence, etc. that you
find in many RPGs. Instead Tibia uses a skill system, where your skills
get higher as you use them more often. Swing that sword enough and your
sword skill will go up a level; cast enough spells and your magic level
will go up; catch enough fish and your fishing skill will go up. Skills
include axe fighting, sword fighting, club fighting, fist fighting
(really worthless in this game), magic level, distance fighting,
shielding and fishing.

Initially training your skills
(leveling them up) is pretty easy, and they go up quite nicely while
you're grinding away killing enemies anyway. After a while it really
starts to slow down, and you'll find yourself training your skills
instead of killing enemies just so you can more efficiently kill them
later. This usually involves taking a really weak weapon and hitting
some type of enemy that heals itself periodically (like a ghoul or monk)
while at the same time having a couple of weak creatures like rats or
snakes hit you. The weak weapon insures that you don't kill the creature
so you can hit it many times and raise your attacking skill, and the
weak creatures hitting you raise your shielding skill in the process. It
starts taking hundreds of hours of efficient training just to raise one
skill point. A knight is the class that raises melee skills the
fastest, and with 99 sword fighting you will still have to hit something
with a sword weapon nearly a quarter of a million times to raise that
skill up one more point -- and this will take you well over 100 hours of
constant training.

There are four classes in Tibia: the
knight, the paladin, the sorcerer and the druid. The knight can wear
some of the heavier armors in the game and wield the best melee weapons.
His melee and shielding skills go up fast but his magic level and
distance skills go up really slowly. He gains 15 health per level but
only 5 mana, and is the de facto tank class in the game. At high levels
he has a lot of health and does moderate damage, and this is the class I
originally started the game with. You end up grinding up a storm
killing weak to moderate enemies constantly to level, and it's really a
boring endeavor.

Some time ago they introduced "shared
experience" into Tibia, and this really helped to mitigate the boring
prospect of playing a knight so it's not so bad these days as it was for
me. I used to play with a friend who was a paladin, and I stood there
tanking strong monsters with my shield and high health. We got some loot
and made a little money, but over a year of tanking all these enemies I
leveled up from about level 60 to 65. During that same time my friend
leveled up from about 45 to over 100. This was because he got nearly all
of the experience for killing the enemies while I mostly just took
damage from them. Thank goodness those days are over.

The
paladin is not what you are expecting, as it is the ranged class in
Tibia for some reason. It still has access to many holy spells and can
raise shielding pretty quick, but it raises the distance fighting really
fast and magic level at a medium pace. It gains 10 health per level and
15 mana and is widely considered to be one of the most versatile and
well-rounded classes in the game. Since it has a decent health pool,
mana pool, does good physical damage and can use a moderate amount of
magic too, this is a well-rounded character that's probably your best
choice to start out with.

Sorcerers and druids are pretty
similar in the fact that they both have a ton of mana but very little
health. They both get a whopping 30 mana per level, but only 5 health.
They both cast a lot of the same spells, both raise magic levels at a
good pace and everything else slowly. They differ in a few spells, but
those spells are what actually makes them who they are. Every class has
some sort of spell to heal itself, but druids actually get two
additional spells: heal friend, and mass healing. This allows them to
heal another person by name and heal everyone within a few squares all
around them. They also specialize in ice and earth magic. Sorcerers get
more attack spells instead of healing, and they specialize in fire and
energy magic.

Sorcerers and druids (and paladins to an extent)
can also create "runes", which are basically spells stored in stones.
These can be used later by any class that has the required magic level
to unleash the spells without spending mana. This is the main weapon in a
mage's arsenal, and you end up spending a lot of time and mana creating
them so that you can hunt enemies with them later. You can also buy
these from NPC shops, but it's not very cost-effective to do so and
you're better off making them yourself or buying commonly used runes
from other players.

All classes can become "promoted" after
level 20 at the cost of some gold. This gives them faster health and/or
mana regeneration and the ability to use some new spells and abilities,
as well as giving them a new title. A knight becomes an elite knight, a
paladin becomes a royal paladin, a druid becomes an elder druid and a
sorcerer becomes a master sorcerer. This only applies to premium
accounts, and when your premium account expires you lose your promotion
and continue playing as an unpromoted character until you purchase more
premium time, at which point your previous promotion kicks back in.

There are a wide variety of enemies in Tibia. At first you'll mostly
kill simple enemies like rats and spiders; then step up to orcs,
minotaurs and dwarfs; then to cyclops and demon skeletons. Eventually
you'll be hunting vampires, dragons, mages and ancient robots. You'll
come across massive demons, spell-slinging warlocks, turtles, sea
serpents and giant spiders -- there are a good number of different
enemies to tangle with.

There are only a couple dozen of each
type of weapon or armor in the game, and you can't really enchant them
or place gems in them or anything special to improve them. This means
for much of the game you'll be using the same equipment, with only a
small upgrade here and there. Some of the lower stuff you can buy from
NPC shops, but most of it you have to find rarely in a strong monster or
buy from another player who has found it. There are also a spattering
of quests here and there, some of which can net you some decent rewards,
but unlike most modern RPGs many of the quests are tough. You won't
find many "go out and kill 10 skeletons and bring me their bones" quests
in Tibia.

What offsets some of the ease of having no level
cap is the fact that Tibia has a rather harsh death penalty. If you die,
you always lose some experience and some percentage of your skill
progress. You also have a chance to drop some of your items. There are
some blessings you can travel around the map and acquire, and while they
do cost money they lower the percentage of everything that you lose. If
you have all five blessings you won't drop any equipment and will lose
only a small percentage of your skills and experience.

CIP
updates the game frequently as well. It receives minor updates here and
there, but twice a year they have major updates; one in the summer and
one around Christmas. These major usually add new items, creatures,
towns, hunting areas, outfits, etc. to the game. They also nearly always
update at least some of the graphics, so over the years tibia has
become pretty polished despite it's simplicity. It's nice to see such an
old game still being given attention.

Years ago I played this
game a lot, mostly because it was a simple game that worked on dial-up
internet, but these days I don't play so much. I get in the mood to play
it occasionally, so I do for a few days, but it doesn't hold my
interest so much anymore. Over the years a lot of the player base has
changed, and now well over half the players don't speak English at all.
There are also a multitude of cheating "bot" characters who run programs
that make them automatically run around killing enemies, leveling up,
collecting loot, etc. This clogs up so many of the good hunting areas
that sometimes it's hard to find somewhere to kill things, especially as
a free account where you don't have as many options to start with.

CIP claims that they're against all the cheaters and botters, but
they've really failed hard at stopping them or even slowing them down.
Between the lack of real players as opposed to botters, and the fact
that even most of the real players you do find can't speak English,
Tibia has lost much of it's sense of community that it once had. A
couple of years ago English was the official language and you "had" to
speak English at least in public channels for that reason. They seem
like they just don't care so much today. With the increased popularity
of RPGs and MMORPGs, Tibia is just too dated to compete so they had to
relax some of their rules to keep people playing. Now around a quarter
of the player base is from Brazil, another quarter is from Poland, a
pile from Mexico and another pile from Sweden and then it finally gets
to the United States population.

Tibia is still a decent game
that still has potential, but unless they do something drastic to
restore the community feeling that it used to have and get rid of the
botters I cannot recommend the game. Walking around aimlessly for an
hour looking for a place to kill some enemies isn't fun, especially when
you can't find anyone who speaks your language to kill time with.
Coupled with the fact that when you're in town your screen is constantly
spammed with bots who are trying to sell gold, it's not a great
experience anymore. To top it all off, the game was $5/month once upon a
time; now it's about $12/month. For that price I could play any number
of better games like Warhammer Online or World of Warcraft.